Macbook Pro and Hybrid Drive

Does anyone know if the new Macbook Pro supports hybrid hard drive drives? I'm assuming yes because the new MBPs are based on the Santa Rosa chipset, but I want to confirm with the experts

 

The drive will work but you wont be able to use the flash on the drive. Only Windows Vista can use the flash part of the hybrid drive to speed up things and use less power. Linux, WindowsXP, OS X all just use the hybrid drive like a normal hard disk.

 

What he said. ^

I'm surprised that's not something they made compatible in Leopard. Is it a MS exclusive deal Samsung has with Microsoft or something?

 

Leopard isn't out yet, how do you know it doesn't include support for that? The beta doesn't have all the features of the finished product, and I could see this as being one of the potential features. It's all speculation at this point though, I'd say wait until the release before making such a judgement.

 

starlight, thats absolutely right. hybrid hard disk / flash drive support is not one of the advertised features, but honestly no one knows whats going to be in leopard.

you wouldn't need a santa rosa chipset to take advantage of a hybrid hard drive.

off topic, but hybrid hard drives seem way more appealing to me than intel turbo memory or an external flash drive...

 

According to Steve Jobs all of the developers got a feature-complete version of Leopard at WWDC. All of the features are pretty much revealed at this point. Having said that it is possible that no one has tried Leopard with a HHD.

 

My understanding of hybrid drives and Robson Tech is that they aren't exactly the same thing. I think Robson Tech is more targetted to catching OS and system related files to speed things like boot up. The flash memory in HHDs seem like just another level of cache between the hard drive's RAM cache and the platters themselves and will store more general data. Hybrid hard drives are more marketed toward the power savings benefits while Robson is more marketed toward the speed benefits (specifically boot up time) hence Turbo Memory. I see them more as complementary rather than direct competitors.

That said, the "dumbness" of hybrid hard drives probably makes it easier to implement. It's probably only a matter of knowing to look in the flash cache instead of the platters themselves and maybe optimizing I/O functions to best fit into the size of a HHD's flash cache once detected.

I would think that Leopard supports both HHDs and Turbo Memory, but Jobs is probably waiting to announce it simulataneously with an appropriate hardware update, like a future MacBook Pro, rather than with Leopard itself. The benefits are more felt in battery life and performance than seen, so it would make sense for Jobs to wait for the hardware, since HHDs aren't exactly common right now.

 

By my understanding, HHDs and Robson/Turbo Memory are almost exactly the same. The only real difference is where the flash memory is located. In HHDs it's in the hard drive unit, and accessed over the SATA bus. In Turbo Memory, it's in a PCIe card. That's it. In both cases the OS controls how the flash is used, and it can cache whatever it wants there. Intel prefers the PCIe approach because they don't make hard drives. The hard drive makers prefer HHDs for obvious reasons. Using them together wouldn't get you any benefit other than the larger amount of cache space.

 

i mostly agree with swarmer in that they have the same function (hhd and intel memory)

however, as far as i know, you can't use both intel memory and a hybrid hard drive (or even readyboost) at the same time. they conflict apparently. it all comes down to "where does short term flash storage buffer make the most sense?

i think on the hdd itself.

 

Yes, but I think this may just be a Vista limitation. In other words, other OSes or future versions of Windows could support multiple flash caches... at least, I don't see any reason why they couldn't.

Hmmm... I kind of like the idea of keeping it separate, actually. That way I can replace one without replacing the other. i.e. if the HD sputters and dies, I don't need to buy more flash. But if putting it in the HDD unit saves physical space inside a laptop, then it might be worth it. In any case, it's probably not a huge deal.